Lived experience as a source of knowledge. What has the room been through? What do participants already know from the inside?
See the pedagogy document for what this lens does across all themes.
These revolutions happened in living memory, and many were led by people whose charisma and words are on film. So the experiential work here has two doors. One is what the room already carries: the Che poster, the family from Nicaragua or Chile, the inherited sense that these were heroes or villains. The other is the extraordinary primary record, Sankara and Bishop speaking for themselves, the Sandinista women telling their own story, a camera inside the Grenada Revolution weeks before it died. The materials below let a room meet these movements as the people who made them experienced them, before the arguments begin.
Anchor questions
Sample prompts to open experiential work in this theme. Adapt to your room. See the facilitator guide for general guidance on experiential prompts.
- What did you first learn about Che, Castro, or “Third World revolution,” and from whom?
- Does anyone here have family from Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, or another of these countries? What story do they carry?
- Watch Sankara or Bishop speak. What do you feel hearing them, and what do you distrust?
- Have you been part of a movement that briefly held power, in a union, a campus, a town? What happened to it?
- What would it have felt like to be inside one of these revolutions in its first year?
Materials that may help
All free unless marked otherwise.
Cuba
- Cuban oral history collections (on-island and exile). The Cuban Voices project and the Miami exile testimony, read against each other. Free: news.miami.edu
- Soy Cuba (Kalatozov, 1964, 141 min). How the young revolution pictured itself, propaganda of extraordinary beauty. Free with a library card on Kanopy or Hoopla: justwatch.com. Mosfilm, the rightsholder, also gives it away on its own channel, but blocks the US.
The revolutionaries in their own voice
- Thomas Sankara speaks (12 min, subtitled). Sankara’s charisma and argument first-hand. Free: youtube.com/watch?v=LVKgvakY_Io
- Thomas Sankara: The Upright Man (Shuffield, 2006, 52 min). The standard biographical documentary. Free, also on Kanopy: youtube.com/watch?v=Ht3H_Zk80ko
- Maurice Bishop Speaks in New York (1983, audio). The New Jewel leader four months before his execution. Free to borrow: archive.org
Inside the revolutions
- ¡Las Sandinistas! (Murray, 2018, 90 min). The women who commanded, telling their own story and naming the later betrayals. Free on Kanopy with a library card: lassandinistas.com
- Cocalero (Landes, 2007, 96 min). Evo Morales from the coca-growers’ unions to the presidency. Free: youtube.com/watch?v=RvNqkIOszyo
- African Dignity: The Ujamaa Dream of Nyerere (2019, 52 min). A sympathetic portrait of the Tanzanian experiment; weigh its warmth against the critical accounts elsewhere. Free: youtube.com/watch?v=MFV1tePl6xQ
- The Untold Story of Kwame Nkrumah (44 min). A Pan-Africanist portrait of Ghana’s first president; pair with the sober account of the one-party state. Free: youtube.com/watch?v=NKkGJk1v6os
- Grenada: The Future Coming Towards Us (1983, 55 min). Filmed inside the revolution weeks before its collapse. Free: vimeo.com/9958883
Status
First pass, and it may be a while before there is a second. Most of the films lean sympathetic, so a facilitator should keep the critical readings from the other lenses in the room. Contributions welcome, especially testimony from Chile and from the Portuguese-African revolutions.